The value of bitcoin has smashed through its record price – and is continuing to rise.
The cryptocurrency, which is attracting a huge amount of mainstream attention, hit the $14,000 mark on Tuesday and is rapidly on its way to $15,000 easily surpassing the previous records set in the days before. It's now pushed through the $16,000 mark – meaning that it's risen through three major milestones in less than a week.
Its value is now $16,130, up nearly 18 per cent in a day, as of Friday morning UK time, according to the Coinbase exchange.
Its value is up over 50 per cent over last week, more than 116 per cent over last month, and almost 2,000 per cent over the last year.
Bitcoin is notoriously volatile, and its value is expected to continue to fluctuate wildly. Those fluctuations have caused problems with actually using bitcoin, with Steam announcing that it won't be able to take it any more and multiple exchanges saying the huge amounts of trading is leading to problems with actually transferring them,
Naturally, its spectacular rise has coincided with increasing amounts of interest, with more and more people now looking to invest.
Numerous financial experts are advising potential investors to avoid getting involved with bitcoin, though others are speculating that it could keep rising towards the $1m mark.
Bitcoin only exists online, has no central bank and isn't linked to or regulated by any state.
An anonymised record of every bitcoin transaction is stored on a huge public ledger known as a blockchain.
However, transactions made with the cryptocurrency are irreversible, which makes investors in bitcoin attractive targets for cybercriminals.
This article is being regularly updated to reflect bitcoin's latest value.
